Heroes

Do you have any real life heroes? Not like the heroes on the TV show but real people that have had a positive impact on your life. More importantly, if you have children, do they have real live heroes? Someone to look up to, someone to emulate and think that they would like to be just like that when they grow up, someone, hopefully out of the sports world because many athletes (not all but just enough to taint them) are spoiled, greedy self absorbed individuals not worthy of recognition. All children should be encouraged to find someone they admire. Making sure a child reads is a good way to help them find a hero or heroine.

When I was a child I lived across the street from a small county library and I think I spent as much time there as I did at home. I read everything I could find, I even worked there for a few years. It’s where I found my heroes, Capt. Ted Lawson from Fresno, Ca. and Mickey Mantle. I know I said no sports figures but it was different then, they were mainly just self absorbed drunks not out to see how many women they could lay or how many children they could father and the drug of choice was legal.

Ted Lawson was the main character in Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo, a book about the first air raid on Tokyo by US forces during WWII, a long range raid in which the bombers took off from an aircraft carrier, not from land. Capt. Lawson’s plane, the Ruptured Duck ran out of fuel short of the planned landing area in China that was not occupied by the Japanese. They had to ditch the B-25 on a small island off the coast and as a result of the crash, he suffered a severe leg laceration and his left leg was crudely removed due to infection. It was a story of strength and survival that a child’s mind could run with.